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Nov 6, 2010

Tuwa: The Laughing Fish

Tuwa is the name of the place where we stayed in. To give you a background, the designers of this homestead at first decided to call it the Laughing Fish only.

They asked me to give a feedback months ago and I noticed that the name is disconnected with the land. It needs to be grounded so I said, why not Filipinonize it a bit.

So we brainstormed a little, and I suggested, how about Tuwa? We googled the name and we were surprised that in Latin America, Tuwa means Earth. Perfect!

These are actually very few photos of the place because I wasn't able to join the tour which they'll have tomorrow for the obvious reason that I left early.

The structure is mostly inspired by South East Asian traditional houses. The interiors are very Japanese, and it is accentuated by South African art works. If you'd ask me, it was very tastefully done considering that it's a hybrid Nipa hut or something.

There were possibly more than a hundred art works around the houses (statues, paintings, photographs...) but I wasn't able to take more photos.

This is the bed where I stayed. It's interesting to note that each room has a mini library. Topics range from permaculture, to mechanical engineering to history to cookbooks. Very diverse collection.

The kitchen is very lovely because of the collection of spices they have - all organic and mostly home grown. They use the spices a lot for their Indian and Thai dishes.

They are not connected on the grid so they use a mix of solar, wind power and a generator to run their refrigerators, computers, lights and other minor electric equipments.

The houses aren't done yet because they are still improving their water treatment facility and waste management. They are yet to add paintings and other artworks to all the houses because the artists (who is one of the owners) is still trying to put some final touches to her works.